My friend, 9W2AZV gave me the drawing for this 2 meter antenna, I haven’t tried building it yet. The antenna seems to share common design with a collinear antenna. I ran this schematic in MMANA-GAL and found out the antenna has a very nice flat radiation pattern which maximize the transmission reach.

Woops, seems like the SSN (smoothed sunspot number) count for this month is equals to 0.

I only manage to make 6 contacts with DX station on 10 meter during September. Partly due to bad propagation, partly due to my busy schedule, which kinda limit my ham activities to Sundays and Saturdays.

I’ve been getting all sorts of questions about working 10 meter from fellow hams in my place. I advises them against it as the propagation right now isnt as great as couple months before

Plus, I’ve known quite few local hams that regret that they venture into 10 meter unprepared, as it requires a lot of patience and different skills to work with.

In another note, I would like to extend my warmest congratulations to those who has passed the 2008 Morse Code test, more details in 9M2MGL website

I took some time off to build my first HF antenna using the plan I’ve obtained few months ago. I chose moxon as my first 10 meter HF antenna as it is small and compact and it is directional, allowing me to focus it into a single direction for a pretty quiet QSO, without much interference.

The material I used in building this moxon are :

Green ground (12 Gauge ?) wire, it has 7 copper wire inside it.

PVC pipe (3/4″ diameter) as necessary to hold the wire in place, you can use other materials too, as long as it formed the basic dimension of moxon antenna

Performance
Although I build it only as a temporary antenna (thus its flimsy), it performed rather well when compared to other types of popular 10 meter band antenna in my place (Delta Loop, Inverted-V) as the antenna is directional and it does not requires the use of transformer balun.

I’ve managed to make contact with 12 stations in 6 days since it has been erected.

Some tips working on 10 meter band

Use a good low loss cable such as RG-8 or Belden 9913

Make sure you know where you point your antenna, the direction of your antenna is crucial if you ever to make contact with distant station.

The propagation is pretty good during daytime between 3pm – 8pm by my observation, use that time window wisely.

Use directional antenna like Moxon or Yagi as they allow you to focus your transmission to a certain direction and eliminate excessive interference on the band.

Be patient

That’s it and good luck!

p/s:
I wouldn’t recommend PVC pipes if you are planning to erect a permanent antenna as they are flimsy. Use aluminium pipes or copper tubes as they are more durable and offers best performance.